Biography

Hi, my name is Jim Lees.

Tying at the Dutch Fly Fair 2012.

I began fly fishing on a small tributary of the river Clyde in Scotland almost 30 years ago and started fly tying at the same time; I didn’t realise there was a choice, with no local fly shops I assumed if you wanted to fly fish you had to tie your own flies. It seemed natural there wouldn’t be one without the other. With basic instructions from a friend my early efforts were crude to say the least but they caught some fish and launched a lifelong passion.
Early on I developed an interest in the riverside insect life; their life cycles and behaviours. How and when the different species became available to Trout as food. This led me away from traditional Clyde flies and on to experimenting with new materials and new fly designs, most of my influences back then came from American books and magazines. With the internet came a whole raft of new influences from all over the world and access to many new materials to play with. I’m still experimenting to this day and I hope I always will be, what’s important to me though is the end result so the flies I like to tie the most are the flies that catch fish.
I’ve also been lucky enough to test out my fly tying experiments on rivers throughout the UK, in Poland and in Slovenia and have demonstrated my flies at shows and fly fairs in Sweden, The Netherlands, Ireland and around the UK.
I am also currently a member of the Semperfli/Essential Fly and Partridge of Redditch Pro-teams and am grateful for the support they have given me and the great products of theirs I get to play with.